Cirrus@Austlit

Nicole Watson is a member of the Birri-Gubba People and the Yugambeh language group. She holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Queensland, a Master of Laws from the Queensland University of Technology and was enrolled in the PhD program at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University.

Watson was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Queensland in 1999. She has worked for Legal Aid Queensland, the National Native Title Tribunal and the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency. Her area of research is the legal recognition of Indigenous relationships with land. A former editor of the Indigenous Law Bulletin and former columnist for the National Indigenous Times, she joined Tracker magazine as a monthly columnist in 2011. she has been involved in the Indigenous Mentoring Program at the New South Wales Writers Centre and the First Nations of Australia Writers Network.

She has published extensively on issues relating to Indigenous Australians and the law, especially in relation to the Northern Territory Intervention, to issues of land ownership and connection to country, and the particular difficulties facing Aboriginal women.

In 2016, she was appointed to the University of Sydney Law School.

As of 2017, Watson has published one novel, The Boundary. An earlier novel, Return of the Clever Man, was shortlisted for the David Unaipon Award in 2007, but has not yet been published.

She is the daughter of writer and activist Sam Watson and sister of Samuel Wagan Watson.